NEW Dorchester Town boss Leigh Robinson has warned Magpies’ fans the club’s situation will worsen before improving after a damaging 3-1 loss at Beaconsfield.

Defeat rooted the Magpies to the bottom of the BetVictor Southern Premier South table, a point adrift of the Rams, who rose into 21st.

Dorchester were hindered by one-game bans for Neil Martin and Nick Hutchings, while Tom Blair served the first of a huge seven-game suspension having collected three red and 12 yellow cards this season.

Key centre-half Callum Rose was also out injured with an ankle knock and Dorchester found themselves 3-0 down after 49 minutes through James Ewington’s brace and a Luke Winsper own goal.

Tom Bath did score a consolation, winning and converting a penalty for his 17th goal of the season, but Dorchester crashed to a ninth away league defeat of the season.

In his first interview with Echosport, Robinson said: “We knew it was going to be a tough day because we’ve taken over at a terrible time, not just because of the league table.

“Timing’s everything in football and we’ve wandered into a team that had so many players missing. We were a little bit fearful of that because we’re down to the bare bones and more.

“Even though we were playing Beaconsfield, people look at that and think ‘you’ve got to go and get something’.

“It was a case of get what you can, get through it and move on because we only took over on Thursday, so there was no time to train, improve the squad or anything.”

He added: “We’ll improve the squad and get better in the coming weeks. I did warn the club that because of the players we’re missing, there’s no magic wand and it might get worse before it gets better.

“We’re going to need some weeks to improve the squad and that was certainly evident (on Saturday).”

Robinson revealed he will call on his experience at Truro, where he led the White Tigers out of the National League South relegation zone, and has set the Magpies a target number of wins to beat the drop.

He said: “We’ve got quite a lot less time, which is the problem here.

“At Truro that was mid-September we took over and there’s only 18 games to go now.

“Being realistic, we knew it was going to be a tough task because you look at the league table and the team weren’t in a good place and the teams around them have all got games in hand.

“It doesn’t matter when they come or who they come against, we’ve got to work to a required number of wins and that’s what we’ve got to focus on.

“Losing (at Beaconsfield) doesn’t really matter as long as we make that up somewhere else.

“When you’re in a relegation scrap like we are, you know you need a certain amount of wins whenever they come – that’s what we’ve got to keep working towards.”